Economic, social, energy and environmental assessment of inter-municipality commuting: The case of Portugal

Commuting is one of the main contributors to the high energy consumption patterns in modern economies. The need to reduce the energy spent in commuting has attracted the attention of academics and policy makers. The main goal of this research is to improve knowledge of the economic, social, energy and environmental opportunity costs of inter-municipality commuting and to support policy-oriented strategies that explicitly take them into account. For this, we use hypothetical assumptions based on the baseline scenario that Portuguese households do not travel between municipalities for commuting purposes coupled with the expected changes in private final consumption. Accordingly, the direct, indirect and induced opportunity costs of inter-municipality commuting are assessed using an input–output model. The significance of the estimated virtual net benefits of commuting is analyzed according to their macroeconomic (GVA, taxes, international imports and employment), energy (primary energy consumption) and environmental (CO2 emissions) dimensions. The results obtained empirically indicate that inter-municipality commuting has significant opportunity costs in the GVA and GDP as well as in primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The results also indicate that commuters in metropolitan regions and long-distance commuters are responsible for a major share of these opportunity costs.